Perchance to Dream
by fragrantfields
Summary: A/U set during the last "Daybreak"  Spoilers for that  Laura fever-dreams in sickbay. Alternate ending that is HEA for A/R. Reference to torture,unpleasant medical procedures including heavy sedation,cancer treatment, end of life care, alternate ending


A/N: I own nothing and no one here.

Summary: In an A/U, everything is almost the same except for the ending for A/R

I wanted to explore a happy ending in an A/U while seeing how much action and visuals I could keep from canon. The "substance" is loosely based on a Dilaudid or Propofol mixture and some liberties were taken as to effect. I don't know for certain if a person under heavy sedation can hear what's being said around them.

'

**Perchance to Dream**

Cottle had said this would be best. Some morpha plus a strong sedative that had recently been cooked up (by Baltar, which made both men uneasy, but beggars can't be choosers and it had tested out well enough). While the latest, last desperate concoction slowly wept through the IV, Laura would dreamlessly sleep, without the anxiety that was worse than the pain. Without fearful hope, without despair.

Baltar assured Cottle that she would be under enough to not suffer while they waited for the new cancer-fighting cocktail to work, or fail. Others could do her suffering for her, while she slept so deeply that she would require assistance to breathe, to take sustenance , to void, even for her heart to keep beating with regular rhythm.

The IV dripped. Cottle lit another cigarette before checking the line again, and hated that he wanted to believe Baltar so badly this time.

"Keep reading. You're not in my way."

The book from which Bill liked reading to her best was closed and on top of the bedside table. He'd wait until she was aware of his voice, at least, to read that with her. His slightly shaking hands held recon reports on planet-side conditions instead.

Cottle spoke from behind him, wanting to give him at least the privacy of a turned back.

"I doubt she can hear you. She sure as hell can't process anything you're saying." He leaned towards the Admiral's ear. "It won't hurt her for you to get some rack time. At least take ten to shit, shower and shave."

"I'm good for now."

Cottle turned away, taking a deep drag.

"Might want to clear that stubble before we bring her around. Her skin abrades easier these days."

He pulled the curtain closed around the allegedly dreamless woman and her companion.

Bill sighed and picked up the reports, spinning adjectives and adverbs around observations of flora and fauna.

Baltar's ego had painted a perfect picture of deep sedation. Like most of the products of the mixture of his grandiose ego and brilliant brain, it missed the mark in the details, where the devils live.

.

.

Laura dreamed.

The confines of her medical bed, the tubes and tape morphed into a tightly wound blanket and a Raptor cockpit. The soft gray wool sometimes touching her body transformed into an old pink plaid blanket she had loved as a child. That made her think of ashes and a wave of sadness washed over her.

One of the gods of Kobol was talking, deep and soft. The rumbling made her think of Zeus. He was world-building. It seemed to make him very tired…she could hear it in his voice.

So many words for green, and lush, and growth. And animals…four legs, two legs, feathers. Some were striped. Some were…_pink?_She liked a god with a sense of humor.

She dreamed of a cabin. There was something sad about the cabin; she could hear it in the voice of the god. She saw herself as a goddess with long flowing hair and red raiments, trying to reach, to offer solace. She had been made out of plaster, though, and couldn't reach out. She tried to take on his sadness without moving. She thought of comforting words but her mouth was sealed, her throat immobile, voiceless.

Something shifted in her dreaming. She was alone in the Raptor, no longer a goddess. A woman alone, wrapped in a soft blanket. She had lost something warm at her side.

'

.

"Look here…and here. See?"

Cottle tapped his pen against the X-rays, hard enough to make them was the only sign of his excitement. If this was a crazy déjà vu dream, Bill didn't want to wake up.

He'd popped any number of pills to keep his pain tamped down as he sat by Laura, waiting. After Tigh's unobtrusive visits, offering sit-reps and belts from his flask, he knew his reading got more colorful, more imaginative. He had thought he'd have to stop soon, give over to being Admiral Adama again, when Cottle came and pulled him off the side of the bed where he'd been leaning while he murmured fantasies.

"Like last time? Is this gonna work like last time?"

"Frak, I don't know. Last time, we bought her months. This might be the same. Might be more; might be less."

Bill reverently touched the clear x-rays, the new lab reports. He thought they were beautiful, as luminous as any sacred scroll.

"What now?" He tried to hide the wince from muscles stretching against his scars, muscles that had tightened during his vigil.

Bushy white eyebrows drew together over Cottle's eyes.

"'What now' is you're going to get some rest before I start bringing her around. I want all the tubes out before we drop the sedation."

It took Cottle's promise that they'd hold off dialing down the meds until he returned, to get the Admiral moving.

_._

_._

_New Caprica_, she thought_. Detention. Torture. Stabbing her in unexpected jabs, mocking concerned voices. Violations. Choking. Cold._

She wondered when she would die.

Cockpit again. _Warm, wrapped, him by her side. Nothing hurt. Images of animals, pink birds, blue sky, green grass. So much…life._

.

.

He watched the clear fluids drip steadily into her veins, the experimental sedation lifting. At Cottle's nod, he touched her cheek, smoothed the skin near her ear. His fingers felt the dampness at her pillow. He unclenched his jaw enough to jab his tongue out for a taste. Closing his eyes, he licked her salty tears from his fingers.

_That mother-frakker Baltar had been talking out his ass again,_ he thought. _She hadn't been so sedated that she hadn't cried._He looked at the discarded intubation tube, the catheter, the other lines that had invaded her body, now coiled, laying to the side like discarded snakes.

His face twisted, a Tauren war mask. "Baltar was frakkin' wrong." He wiped tears from the other side of her face. "She felt more than we thought."

He remembered his own flashes of awareness after he was shot, jumbled and terrifying, airway blocked, something rammed up his cock, burning. And the dreams. The whispering around him, half-heard, confusing.

Cottle laid a cautioning hand on his shoulder. "She's not dying, though. At least, not for now. If she _has_suffered, at least you've got the time to help her through it." He pulled the curtain closed behind him as he gave Bill as much of an illusion of privacy as he could.

Bill's heart ached every time he watched her face twist as she slowly swam back up to the surface of consciousness. When her lips moved, eyes still closed and damp with tears, he imagined her feeling stuck between her dreams and waking, and his own tears fell on her hand as he clasped it tight.

_Something solid_, he thought_. She needs something solid to reassure her that this is real, that the dreams are over._His eyes never left her face as his fingers worked.

.

.

The god's voice had turned into Bill's. Beyond the rasping soreness, beyond the aches, beyond the nubby texture of the sheets, she felt something different. Warm, hard, smooth.

"Come on, Laura, open your eyes." His voice was thick and low. He dabbed a wet swab over her lips, delicately touching it to the dry corners of her mouth.

"Roslin, that's a…that's an order. _Please_…."

Her eyes fluttered open, caught the flash of gold on her hand.

Her lips formed a soundless "Yes, sir" as they turned up at the corners, waiting for the cup of ice chips he held.

.

.

A/N: Being new to BSG, I wanted to write at least a temporary HEA. And selfishly, I wanted to write a more positive outcome for this kind of scenario that is usually reality, no disrespect intended towards those who have also sat by bedsides and waited.

Reviews, concrit, comments welcomed and appreciated


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